Saints win through to a Scottish Cup showdown
BEN RAMAGE
St Mirren Senior Men booked their place in the Scottish Cup final in February after dethroning Edinburgh Kings in Paisley.
The night saw the entire club travel to the Lagoon to celebrate the Basketball Paisley festive fun night, with the crowd hoping to have even more to celebrate by the end of the match.
The excitement of Santa’s elves, the showcase matches, the Dad’s match and a half-court challenge won by Brad Low would be a tough act to follow.
The home side began with a balanced attack seeing all five starters and one sub scoring in the first quarter.
They were led by Chris Barron with both a traditional three-point play and a three-pointer to bag six points in the quarter, with captain Nick Collins and Chris Cleary each scoring from long range securing five points each.
Kings seemed to match the Saints basket for basket and the score after the first quarter sat at 22-19.
In the second, the home team used effective defence and pushed the lead to an impressive 15 points.
Fergus Harte was passing out assists like candy canes on his way to a season-high 10 assists for the match. At the half the score was 5243, with the Saints well in control of the game.
In the second half the Saints opened with Ali Salimy having the hot hand, hitting back to back threepointers before Eden Duff came off the bench and also added a pair of three-pointers.
The strong defence and freeflowing ball movement continued to give the Saints good looks at the basket and the lead was stretched to 84-64 at the end of the third quarter.
The substitutions continued to make an impact in the fourth quarter and with the result in the bag the Saints were able to enjoy the final period that finished 101-86.
The win left the Saints looking forward to a Scottish Cup final in the new year.
As ever, the scoring came from all over led by Collins with 19 just ahead of Cleary who notched 18.